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Practice Walking the Cup

Looking for a way to practice walking the cup without a torch. I sit at a desk at lot during the day at my regular job.

I would swear I saw on this forum or YouTube or somewhere where a person practiced walking the cup with a pencil and paper. I can't recall if he had a pencil stuck in an old torch body or what but it worked. One could see the design (I.e. figure-8, etc.) on the paper.

I have a lot of times when I could be doing that.

Anyone recall seeing the instructions for this? (Or another method that works.)

Looking for a way to practice walking the cup without a torch. I sit at a desk at lot during the day at my regular job.

I would swear I saw on this forum or YouTube or somewhere where a person practiced walking the cup with a pencil and paper. I can't recall if he had a pencil stuck in an old torch body or what but it worked. One could see the design (I.e. figure-8, etc.) on the paper.

I have a lot of times when I could be doing that.

Anyone recall seeing the instructions for this? (Or another method that works.)

Do not see an easy way to do it effectively without having a visual on the arc length and puddle.......
maintaining that consistant tungsten standoff distance is critical...

Yeah, not expecting it to be like the real thing. But I do think it could teach the motion to the hand. Nothing but actual practice with an arc is going to fill the total bill.

Yes, that's one of the videos I saw a long time ago. Thanks H80N.

I'd love to free hand guys but these 60 year old hands just won't hold that still any more unless I can anchor it to the work. Even then it's iffy. I do well for my stick welding to not look like an orchestra conductor at work. LOL (yeah, it's not 'that' bad. )

Yeah, not expecting it to be like the real thing. But I do think it could teach the motion to the hand. Nothing but actual practice with an arc is going to fill the total bill.

Yes, that's one of the videos I saw a long time ago. Thanks H80N.

I'd love to free hand guys but these 60 year old hands just won't hold that still any more unless I can anchor it to the work. Even then it's iffy. I do well for my stick welding to not look like an orchestra conductor at work. LOL (yeah, it's not 'that' bad. )

[It's easy but takes time/practice like anything......fillets are easist to practice. Welding tips and tricks on youtube has plenty of how to vids. DaveQUOTE=H80N;317609]FWIW... think this is Part 2 of that video...

I agree with SelfTaught in that I think it best for some one to learn to TIG weld "free hand" style and then move on to learning how to walk the cup.

While there's no doubt that knowing both techniques makes a person a better (more versatile) TIG hand what I've seen again and again over the years is that people that start out learning the "cup walking" technique end up relying to heavily on it and tend not to develop good "free hand" skills.

While cup walking is a very valuable technique for certain things in certain situations it is a very poor choice for a lot of others. Time after time I've seen the cup walking technique attempted to be used on things that ended up yielding less than optimal results because of far, far to much heat input. There's no telling just how much ss is out there that's been burnt up (and had it's corrosion resistant properties compromised) by the cup walking technique.

Some where here in the forums recently I read some thing about fillet welds being a good place to practice the "cup walking" technique. And while a T-joint between two plates is one of the easier places to "walk a cup" it's almost always the situation where "free handing" it would be the better way to go.

As I see it, one of the major limitations to the cup walking technique is that you can't get very fast travel speeds out of it. Which more often than not seems to results in excessive (and unnecessary) heat in put.

I put this ss knock out pot together this past Thursday and it's a good example of some of things I was trying to get at in the above post concerning the cup walking vs. free hand techniques.

For one thing you couldn't "cup walk" most of it even if you knew how and wanted to. And even in the few places where you could employ the "cup walking" technique the better choice was to free hand it because it was faster and had way less over all heat input.

With the exception of the tack welding during fit up I was running in the 200 to 250 amp range using 1/16 and 3/32 316L filler rod. I used 3/32 tungsten in a WP-20 torch.

My particular free hand technique for 98% of the welds on this pot was to strike the arc, get a puddle established on the base material and then hook the filler rod up to the leading edge of it and then keeping it hooked there with no intermittent daubing of the filler rod involved.

Walking the cup is very fast. There are situations where it is not optimal but you control the heat just like freehanding with the pedal and filler size. I disagree with "too much heat". That is all welder control no matter what technique you use. Consistency is much easier to attain with walking....if you are "walking" and doing too big of a weld that is another story....but not all cup walking welds need to be oversized....it's a technique.....just different. If you saw some of the stainless pipe welding "walking" welds I see at work you would agree. And all of these welds are tested/certified.I learned to freehand first but one is not easier than the other. Both take time and patience to learn.....you would love your self if you could backfeed while walking an open root in 6g.....

Originally Posted by 4956

I put this ss knock out pot together this past Thursday and it's a good example of some of things I was trying to get at in the above post concerning the cup walking vs. free hand techniques.

For one thing you couldn't "cup walk" most of it even if you knew how and wanted to. And even in the few places where you could employ the "cup walking" technique the better choice was to free hand it because it was faster and had way less over all heat input.

With the exception of the tack welding during fit up I was running in the 200 to 250 amp range using 1/16 and 3/32 316L filler rod. I used 3/32 tungsten in a WP-20 torch.

My particular free hand technique for 98% of the welds on this pot was to strike the arc, get a puddle established on the base material and then hook the filler rod up to the leading edge of it and then keeping it hooked there with no intermittent daubing of the filler rod involved.